After years of being addicted to the fantastic hobby of boardgames, our storage grew enormously. This is even more true if you take into the account that our gaming group tries to follow the practice, that we do not buy more than one copy of the particular position – and then share among us. That way variety of possibilities grows with time enormously.

Still, there are positions which become kind of “classics” and periodically lands on our table despite them being slightly outdated / with older graphics / mechanics. One of them is definitely “Conquest of Empires”.

Many wargamers remember this game and tons of hours spent playing it. I especially like the mechanics of changing the allies – the game is best played with odd number of players, five being the perfect number. The possibility to bribe other players to join your team is really great mechanic and you can suddenly find yourself with huge enemy army at the gates. Still, finding 5 players is sometimes problematic so sometimes you have to be content with four – just like our last game:

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The set-up (click to enlarge)

In that set-up it is still possible to change alliances from turn to turn and when properly done, that could be a game-changing factor. Which indeed was also the case during our session:

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And final situation (click to enlarge for details)

And here brief summary of our game depicted on above picture:

  • 125 points – Konrad – firmly established in Rome and nearby provinces; managed to accumulated definitely largest amount of points although was in constant struggle with Kuba for capital
  • 110 points – Michal – I have focused on Africa – Egypt, Numidia but also managed to take Asia Minor; unfortunately, I was not able to get footstep into Europa which prevented me from getting more points
  • 110 points – Kuba – mainly focused on Spain, islands on Mediterranean and also involved in the struggle for Rome; the struggle lost to Konrad which gave victory to the latter
  • 95 points – Lukasz – was in the end squeezed in Greece and Macedonia, between Konrad and me. He tried to fight back but in vain…

As always, the game was a lot of fun, the back-stabbing of your previous allies is always fun and changing dynamics of the game makes it a position we like to come back to quite often!